Can Information Alter Perceptions about Women's Chances of Winning Office? Evidence from a Panel Study

Abstract

When the 113th Congress convened in January 2013, women occupied only 17.9% of the 435 seats in the U.S. House, ranking the United States 80th globally in terms of the percentage of women serving in the lower legislative assembly. The underrepresentation of women is particularly puzzling, as political scientists since the 1990s have consistently shown that women candidates are not of demonstrably less quality than men on average (see Fulton 2012, 2014; Fulton et al. 2006; Lawless and Fox 2010), do not suffer from a gender-related funding disadvantage (Berch 1996; Burrell 2008; Gaddie and Bullock 1995; Fox 2010; Herrick 1995, 1996), and do about as well as men at the polls, accounting for differences in incumbency status (Fox 2010; Smith and Fox 2001).

Strategic Discrimination

“…Correct Information Treatment For the correct information treatment, we cannot reject the null hypothesis of no effect. Contrary to Dowling and Miller (2015), I find no evidence that facts change subjects' beliefs about the competitiveness of female or Black candidates. Instead, my findings are consistent with a broader literature suggesting that when it comes to politics, misperceptions are sticky (Nyhan and Reifler 2010;Berinksy 2017).…”

Knowledge Persists, Opinions Drift: Learning and Opinion Change in a Three-Wave Panel Experiment

“…With respect to the former, our results suggest that opinions may return to “pretreatment” states even if factual beliefs remain updated. With respect to the latter, our results are in line with work in other (nonpolicy) areas that suggests opinions may be difficult to shift over the long-term (see, for example, Gerber, Gimpel, Green, & Shaw, 2011, on candidate choice), but that knowledge gains may persist for some, but not all, of the mass public (see, for example, Dowling & Miller, 2015, on perceptions of women’s chances of winning office). Our results therefore suggest that educating people about the contents of policies may not be enough to win their long-term support.…”

“…Each respondent who participated in Wave 1 was recontacted (through MTurk) to participate in a second survey (Wave 2). Approximately 56% of our initial respondents completed the second wave of the study (923 of 1,649), which is in line with other work that has used panel designs on online samples (Berinsky, 2017; Berinsky, Huber, & Lenz, 2012; Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011; Dowling & Miller, 2015). We fielded Wave 2 one week after the end of Wave 1, and respondents completed it between 7 and 14 days after taking the initial survey, from December 16 to December 20, 2014.…”

“…That said, there is mounting experimental evidence that individuals can accept correct information and update their factual beliefs (Dowling & Miller, 2015; Wood & Porter, 2018). A second explanation for why information fails to move opinion, therefore, is that its effect on factual beliefs is distinct from its effect on opinion.…”

Going all-in: gender and campaign commitment

“…Both prospective candidates (Lawless and Fox, 2010) and the public at large (Dowling and Miller, 2015) view women candidates as disadvantaged relative to men, and women are less likely to see themselves as well-qualified to run for office (Lawless and Fox, 2010). The widely held perception that women fare worse as candidates fuels a wide gulf between the two genders in terms of political ambition, which in turn results in fewer women entering politics (Fulton et al, 2006; Lawless and Fox, 2010).…”